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Insight #18 Flows in Large Complex Projects – Deeper Look
Dar Al Riyadh Insights reflect the knowledge and experience of our Board, executives and staff in leading and providing PMC, design and construction management services. Dar Al Riyadh believes in the importance of broadly sharing knowledge with our clients and staff to improve project outcomes for the benefit of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Deeper Look at Flows
Large complex projects do not follow classical transformation models (see the figure below). The activity-based focus, memorialized in work breakdown structures, neglects the importance and impact of “flows” within the project context. As supply chains become more tightly linked to project processes, some of the flow considerations now can be seen as core to logistics and as being analogs for efficient project management. Precedence and unnecessary coupling of activities, in fact, may harm a large complex project’s performance in ways perhaps not evident on initial inspection.
Additionally, large complex projects are far from being bounded as classical project management theory would suggest. Rather than well-defined boundary limits, we discover semi-permeable boundaries across which Influencing Flows transit, impacting the Transformational Flows within the project proper. These flows arise from a multiplicity of stakeholders and other agents, who in turn are influenced by the project itself.
These Influencing Flows then interact with a project’s Transformational Flows and with each other. They may give rise to Induced Flows, which while often are short-lived (such as the COVID-19 derived flows described previously) can be particularly turbulent and impactful on the project.
Let’s look at each of these more closely.
Transformational Project Flows
Transformational Flows encompass both the Transformational Flows that occur within the tasks that collectively comprise a decomposed project as well as the Transformative Flows distinct from individual task execution. Together they represent executing each task in an optimal sequence.
Large complex projects require us to focus not only on task inputs and outputs, but importantly on the Transformative Flows between tasks. During the execution phase of a project these flows are representative of the construction process itself and the selected means and methods. To improve overall execution in this phase, it is necessary to expand our basis of design to specifically include construction-related factors, preferences, and choices. Consideration of factors impacting project flows is essential.
Influencing Flows
Large complex projects both shape the world around them and are directly influenced by it. This direct interaction is our first indication that perhaps our project is not so well bounded. In some sense large complex projects distort both time and space (see the following).
Large complex projects are not well bounded, at least not as described in classical project management theory. Large stakeholder influences; new outcome requirements; stakeholder needs over extended delivery timeframes and lifetimes; and the sheer number of outside project inputs and assumption drivers all act to create a semi-permeable boundary across which there are many informational and Influencing Flows. A subsequent Insight in this series provides a good starting point for identifying Influencing Flows.
This porous project boundary, combined with the self-defining and emergent nature of the project, characterizes the non-deterministic system that best describes large complex projects.
Influencing Flows can act to shape the project’s Transformative Flows. Those are well known in classical theory and described above. These Influencing Flows arise from flows crossing the semi-permeable project boundary as well as the interaction between two or more Transformative Flows present within the project context. Here are two key points: (1) large complex projects are not easily isolated and (2) just as they are susceptible to changing externalities, these large projects also act to change the external environment that they affect. In essence, the Influencing Flows we find in the large project environment can be described as semi-permeable.
Influencing Flows often change the number and nature of tasks to be undertaken as well as how the various process flows define, interact with, and drive forward the transformation process. This is significantly different than classical theory’s execution of each task in an optimal manner with optimal process flows. This leads to an important recognition that planning activities must address two key elements:
- Tasks, including the work flows within those tasks.
- Flows, including Transformative (or systems) Flows between tasks as well as new flows induced by these Influencing Flows.
Disruptive flows into a project often result from a lack of transparent and robust communication with stakeholders.
Induced Flows
The Influencing Flows arising from a multiplicity of stakeholders (Figure 1, page 7) and eddies they create in the planned Transformative Flows are shown together with a new flow that arises from this interaction between flows: Induced Flows that can arise suddenly, be highly disruptive, and disappear just as suddenly. (Refer to the Induced Flows described in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic.)
Large complex projects act equally on their environment as the environment acts on the project. We must be cognizant of feedback loops that translate an internal project action to a new or modified Induced Flow.